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Highlights
- Lara Croft’s tunnel vision and inability to see the bigger picture often put innocent people in harm’s way, as seen in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
- Lara’s arrogance leads her to believe she is morally and physically superior to Trinity, causing her to make reckless decisions that have disastrous consequences.
- Lara’s preference for working alone and her limited relationships with others make her a bad team player, despite the occasional presence of companions in her adventures.
Lara Croft is one of the strongest, smartest, bravest, and most resilient video game heroines to date. Throughout countless Tomb Raider games, films, and comics, Lara has proved her competence in survival, combat, climbing, and finding thousand-year-old relics while keeping these powerful artifacts away from evil forces and bad people.
Despite many strengths, like any hero, Lara has characteristics that are often detrimental to herself and her mission, and even cause harm to others. The games that form the reboot trilogy – Tomb Raider released in 2013, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider – especially explore the less likable parts of Lara, as well as some of her weaknesses.
6 Tunnel Vision
Lara Often Doesn’t See The Bigger Picture
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which concludes Lara’s transformation from a young, scared adventurer into the brave tomb raider fans have grown to know, reveals dark parts of Lara’s personality not explored before. One of Lara’s weaknesses, revealed in this game, is her inability to look at the bigger picture, and in the process, placing many people in harm’s way.
Early on in the game, Lara finds the Dagger of Chack Chel at the enemy, Trinity’s, excavation site. Despite warnings depicted on the murals, Lara takes the dagger in fear that Trinity will find it first. By taking the dagger and not heeding the warnings, Lara unknowingly triggers “the Cleansing” – the Mayan apocalypse that ultimately ends in an everlasting lunar eclipse. The first stage of the apocalypse is a tsunami, which kills many innocent people even though Lara survives.
5 Arrogance
Lara Thinks She Can Handle Anything
In tandem with tunnel vision, Lara’s arrogance comes across strongly in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Not only does Lara consider herself morally and physically superior to Trinity, as she believes that the Dagger of Chack Chel is safer in her hands, but when given unlimited power, her initial course of action is to keep it and not deny it.
Towards the end of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Kukulkan’s power is transferred to Lara, and as a wise character, Unuratu, warns her, she does initially succumb to the temptation to use it to revive her parents. Lara is arrogant to assume that she is immune to the allure of power and that the dagger is safer in her hands, even though she is the one who caused the apocalypse. In this sense, Lara is no better than her nemesis, Trinity.
4 Bad Team Player
Lara Works Better Alone
From the beginning of the Tomb Raider franchise, Lara Croft is portrayed as a loner. In some games, she is paired with a companion, but it is usually made clear that she works alone. Although Zip gives her guidance on her earpiece in games like Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara mostly ignores his advice and goes her own way. Lara also seems to have limited relationships with her estranged friends, Amanda Everett and Anaya Imanu, as explored in Tomb Raider: Legend and Tomb Raider: Underworld.
Even though Lara is stranded on the island of Yamatai with the entire Endurance crew in the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, she mostly works alone in trying to save her friend, Samantha Nishimura. In subsequent games, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara does not work with Jonah even though they start the journey together, and their relationship is complicated in Shadow of the Tomb Raider due to Lara’s selfish actions.
3 Daddy Issues
Laura Is Haunted By Her Father’s Legacy
Since Lara’s inception in 1996, the narrative of almost every Tomb Raider game revolves around her father. Even in the Tomb Raider movies, Richard Croft’s presence is felt strongly even though he is long deceased, implying that Lara will always exist in the shadow of her father. In what is called the “survivor timeline” – which refers to the Tomb Raider trilogy games – it is implied that Richard Croft was absent for most of Lara’s life, neglecting her in the pursuit of his research.
Moreover, in the Brave Adventurer chapter in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it is suggested that Richard Croft committed suicide, which is the cause of many unresolved issues in Lara. Lara is so obsessed with the death of her father – and to some extent the death of her mother as well – that she for a moment considers using Kukulkan’s power to bring them back to life and condemn the rest of the world in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
2 Melee Combat
Ranged Weapons Suit Her Better
Lara Croft is known for her iconic twin pistols that she uses for most of the Tomb Raider games released before 2013. That being said, melee combat is not one of Lara Croft’s strong points. In pre-2013 Tomb Raider games, Lara’s only option when an enemy comes close to her is to hit them with a pistol most of the time. This is especially problematic, as many enemies throughout the years have ranged from human beings to even dinosaurs.
While this mechanic was slightly revised for the Tomb Raider trilogy, where Lara has the option to hit enemies with a pickaxe or to sneak up behind them for a stealth close-combat kill, if Lara finds herself in close quarters with an enemy, she is likely to come second. This is especially true for heavyweight enemies in the Tomb Raider trilogy, who are best approached with guns or grenades.
1 Recklessness
Lara Often Gambles On Long Odds
While Lara Croft, like most video game characters, simply resurrects at the last saved checkpoint when she dies, as an adventurer, she is one of the most reckless out there. Lara, often without thinking twice, puts her life and the lives of those around her in danger by dabbling with supernatural forces, jumping off and climbing ridiculously high cliffs, engaging at times hundreds of enemies at once, and traversing deadly tombs.
As mentioned before, Lara’s ruthless pursuit of ancient relics and the truth behind her parents’ deaths and disappearances make her lose sight of the immediate danger that her actions pose. Lara recklessly ignores warnings that danger lies ahead, and pushes forward despite nearly impossible odds of survival.
